Family life, on a budget.

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Here we go. Week 1 of my savings for the year. I’m going to try and do a post like this every Monday so I can see how we go week to week. If you’ve read my first post of the year then you’ll have seen how keen I am to save properly in 2018.

There were a few big purchases this week. Mainly because we decided to buy a new mattress, rather than continue to suffer with the cheap one we bought quickly when we first moved in together. We’ve not got rid of the old mattress though as I’m pretty sure it will come in handy when we move house.

Under bed storage boxes (Argos)

Buy one get one half price – saving £9.00

Cashback via Topcashback – £0.28

American Express Cashback – £0.33

Mattress (Dreams)

Sale price reduction – saving £249 (annoyingly the following week another £30 was taken off the sale price!)

Cashback via Topcashback – £22.41

American Express Cashback – £3.11

Board Game (Waterstones)

Used £10 loyalty card and £5.77 of rewards points towards price

Airport Parking (Holiday Extras)

Needed for for a work trip my boyfriend has to make, but still an opportunity to make some cash back.

I bought a £1 for 30 days trial membership of Kids Pass over Christmas as my kids desperately wanted to go and see a specific film in the cinema later in the month and I was trying to find a way to save money on a cinema trip. It turns out to be a good move as my step daughter also wanted to see something when she came to stay. I therefore actually saved £11.26, but have taken off the initial price of the Kids Pass trial. I’m very very tempted to sign up for a regular subscription at £2.99 a month (a special offer I think as they say it is normally £7.50 a month). If we were to go to the cinema with one or more kids once a month (this trip was just two adults and one child) it would definitely save us at least £8 a month.

Cinema snacks

Bringing our own popcorn and cans of drink from home – saving £22.35 for three of us

Panto Drinks

We also took my step-daughter to the panto at the weekend, and made a real effort not to go to the bar before the performance or at the at the interval as we would normally do. In the end I did go to the bar, but only for a glass of (free) tap water as I was thirsty. Estimated saving £15.

Vintage Reels (eBay)

For a little blogging project that B and I are working on…

Cashback via Topcashback £0.09

General spending

As it’s the start of the month, my boyfriend had quite a few work trips to book in advance. He’ll be able to claim the costs on his expenses, but we still can collect the cash back by booking it on our American Express card. If you (or your partner) travels a lot for work, I’d definitely recommend looking into how to make as much cash back as possible on their trips. I’ll soon write a separate blog post on this, but the biggest tip has to be getting a cash back credit card to pay for everything with. It will cost your company nothing more, but will make you some money in the process. If there are going to be big expenses like flights or hotel rooms then it all soon adds up.

Other American Express Cashback over the week £5.19

Total savings for the week £321.38

Total Cashback for the week £32.72

It’s hard to know this early on in the year is this is a good week for savings or not. And I do also realise that the figures are particularly big due to a big purchase, but I’m still pleased at how much we’ve managed to save so far.

I’m also particular pleased with the amount of cash back to date. The combination of a cash back credit card and regularly using Topcashback really seems to pay off. Now what I need to do is put that much money into a savings account and see how it grows over the year.